The Privilege of My Own Profession: The Living Legacy of Austen in the Classroom

Marcia McClintock Folsom

Marcia McClintock Folsom
(email: marcia.folsom@post.harvard.edu)
is Professor of Literature and Chair of Humanities and Writing at
Wheelock College. She is the editor of Approaches to Teaching Austen’sPride and Prejudice and Approaches to Teaching Austen’sEmma. Longtime JASNA member, she was coordinator of the 2000 JASNA AGM in
Boston, “Pride and Prejudice: Past, Present, Future.”

The
notion of a “Jane Austen legacy” seems
more salient every year. Austen’s name—often
invoked without any explanation—appears in so many places that
it seems to stand for certain ideas. It shows up in popular
culture, in scholarly books, and in newspapers and magazines, and, of
course, the six novels and versions of her “own” life keep
being turned into movies and new television productions. Just
to suggest the variety of invocations of “Jane Austen,”
consider a recent scholarly use of her name. In his 2006
history, The Fall of
the Roman Empire,
Peter Heather describes the lives of wealthy Romans on their country
estates in this way: “Leisured, cultured and landed:
some extremely rich, some with just enough to get by in the expected
manner, and everyone perfectly well aware of who was who. And
all engaged in an intricate, elegant dance around the hope and
expectation of the great wealth that marriage settlement and
inheritance would bring. . . . [T]here is certainly a touch
of Jane Austen in togas about the late Roman upper crust,”
Heather concludes (138). In this portrait of wealthy and
not-so-wealthy Romans at their villas, Heather makes us think of
Austen characters like Willoughby in Sense
and Sensibility,
waiting for Mrs. Smith to die but then settling instead for marriage
to the wealthy Miss Grey.

Such a reference suggests that
Austen’s legacy is so well known that using the words “Jane
Austen” is sufficient to evoke a whole world, and that no
further comment is needed to know what world is being described.
College students who have read only
Pride and Prejudice,
and that while they were in high school, or who have only seen the
movies of Austen’s novels tend to think of “Jane Austen”
as predictable in another specific way: in telling the same old
story of a worthy young woman finding her romantic partner. To
keep Austen’s legacy fresh and alive, in my teaching I try to
help students measure her achievements by identifying what is
inventive and experimental in the distinctive qualities of her prose
in different novels. Recently, I have asked students to detect
the changing ways that Austen depicts consciousness in successive
novels by considering passages from Pride
and Prejudice,
Mansfield Park,
Emma,
and Persuasion.
Various critics have illuminated Austen’s depiction of her
characters’ thinking or inner lives, starting perhaps with
Dorrit Cohn’s 1978 book, Transparent
Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction.
Many others follow, including James Wood with “Jane Austen: The
Birth of Inwardness” (1998). The most sophisticated and
perceptive study of this quality of Austen’s prose is John
Wiltshire’s Recreating
Jane Austen,
especially in the fourth chapter where he analyzes Austen’s
achievement of “inwardness” in Mansfield
Park and Persuasion.
My essay is deeply indebted to his work.

Attentive student readers can
discern fascinating differences among the novels when they think
beyond plot summary. Highlighting the distinctive ways that
Austen depicts characters’ inner lives in the various novels
implicitly counteracts students’ tendency to think of the
novels as similar to each other, a tendency especially common among
readers who have seen the Austen films but have little experience in
close reading. Classroom conversations, reading aloud, and
writing assignments that focus on Austen’s prose enable
students to make fresh and authentic observations about specific
moments in each book. Approaching the novels this way, students
can see the increasing subtlety in Austen’s presentation of
consciousness. In a one-semester course, we usually read at
least one of the Steventon novels (Northanger
Abbey, Sense
and Sensibility, and
Pride and Prejudice)
and all three of the novels written entirely at Chawton (Mansfield
Park, Emma,
and Persuasion).
Among discussions and assignments on various topics, we often look at
Austen’s way of depicting of characters’ inner lives in
each book. Student readers can see differences among
well-chosen passages, and they can articulate ways that Austen in the
last three novels shows greater assurance in capturing the complexity
of thought than in those first drafted at Steventon. As
Wiltshire writes in Recreating
Jane Austen, “In
her last three novels, those both begun and completed at Chawton
after 1809, there is a development of techniques which represent
struggles between incipient thoughts and feelings” (81).

I want to begin by briefly
discussing a famous instance of Austen’s depiction of a mind in
action in the greatest of the first three novels, Pride
and Prejudice, and
then I want to explore more fully another famous, and I think even
more brilliant, chapter in Austen’s last novel, Persuasion.
In each part of this essay, I hope to capture some of the experience
of discovering these scenes in classroom conversations.

In Chapter Thirteen of the second
volume of Pride and
Prejudice, Elizabeth
laboriously reads and absorbs Darcy’s letter, and this chapter
lends itself beautifully to careful analysis in class discussion and
in students’ writing. We read aloud some paragraphs of
the chapter in class. The narrator notes the “contrariety
of emotion” that Elizabeth experiences as she starts to read
the letter, and the narrator attempts to name the elements of this
“contrariety” of feeling with painstaking exactitude
(204). Students see that although Elizabeth’s “feelings
as she read were scarcely to be defined,” the narrator does try
to find language for them. Elizabeth begins reading “[w]ith
amazement,” and “[w]ith a strong prejudice against every
thing he might say,” in a spirit consistent with her
interpretation of Darcy’s behavior in all previous scenes
(204).

With these emotions, Elizabeth
reads “with an eagerness which hardly left her power of
comprehension, and from impatience of knowing what the next sentence
might bring, was incapable of attending to the sense of the one
before her eyes.” This psychologically astute sentence
captures the experience of a mind frantic to absorb written words and
yet almost in rebellion against paying attention. In class, we
talk about what it is like to read an emotionally charged document.
Someone in class can usually describe that experience—how it
makes one’s eyes blur, how one’s racing mind keeps
sentences from registering, how one hurries to read ahead and yet
cannot absorb what is right there on the page.

When Elizabeth gets to the part
of Darcy’s letter where he tells the story of Wickham, “her
feelings were yet more acutely painful and more difficult of
definition. Astonishment, apprehension, and even horror,
oppressed her” (204). We examine the narrator’s
solution to the problem of defining those feelings that are “more
difficult of definition” and “yet more acutely painful.”
We pause over the words and describe what they must refer to:
“astonishment” at new information, “apprehension”
that what Darcy is saying may be true, and “horror” at
having to surrender her “cherished opinion” (204).
We talk about why Elizabeth briefly resolves never to look at the
letter again.

We then watch how Austen makes it plausible for Elizabeth to reverse her
long-standing interpretation of Darcy’s character, to come to
new conclusions about what she has observed in him and in Wickham,
and to grasp her own errors in the past. We trace the steps by
which Elizabeth “[g]radually, and painfully” comes to
understand that what Darcy says is not just possible but undoubtedly
true (Wiltshire 114). Her change requires a kind of discipline characterized by words implying strenuous mental
effort: “collecting herself as well as she could”
and “command[ing] herself so far as to examine the meaning of
every sentence.” She was “forced to hesitate”;
she “weighed every circumstance” and “deliberated
on the probability of each statement” (205). The narrator
describes this process in language that shows Elizabeth moving to new
vantage points and reviewing events of the past from a different
angle: “[T]he affair . . . was capable of a
turn which must make [Darcy] entirely blameless throughout the whole”
(205); “How differently did every thing now appear in which
[Wickham] was concerned!” (207). These brilliant passages
tracing Elizabeth’s thought as she reads each part of the
letter are Austen’s patient, nuanced analysis of a mind in
action, moving through stages of mental and emotional response to
grasp and finally accept unwelcome discoveries. The very
explicitness of the narrator’s search for clear language to
define Elizabeth’s mental experience suggests how much
attention Austen paid to depicting her inner struggle.

As I have recounted in an essay
about teaching this novel, my students exclaim about the two chapters
that include Darcy’s letter and Elizabeth’s reading of
it: “How does she make it so you don’t notice how
reasonable Darcy is the first time you read it?” “Look
how she makes us read the letter over and over again, too!
First we read the real letter. Then we see Elizabeth force
herself to slow down and read it one part at a time. Then we
find out that Elizabeth has read it so many times that she knows it
by heart. In a way, we go through the same thing Elizabeth goes
through!” (Folsom 2). Or as Wiltshire more elegantly puts
it, “The novelist, by presenting the letter without narrative
framing in one chapter and then reviewing the letter through
Elizabeth’s consciousness in the next, takes the reader through
that travail of reading and rereading, that cumulative assault on
previous conviction that is Elizabeth’s experience”
(114).

The conclusion of Elizabeth’s
reading of Darcy’s letter is a moment of dramatized
consciousness when she exclaims to herself, “‘How
despicably have I acted! . . . I, who have prided myself on
my discernment!—I, who have valued myself on my abilities!
. . . How humiliating is this discovery!—Yet, how
just a humiliation!’” She ends with, “‘Till
this moment, I never knew myself!’” (208). This
moment of self-discovery is rendered as internal speech. As
Wiltshire says, “Even if this is not what Elizabeth actually
says aloud, it has all the confidence of a clearly felt inner
conviction that can be immediately expressed in words” (81).
And yet, since Austen presents Elizabeth’s thoughts as
exclamations and as spoken sentences, they may not seem to be exactly
what a person would say in her mind and therefore may not be
completely convincing as actual moments of thinking and feeling.

Brilliant as this chapter is,
Austen moved in her next three novels to even more subtle
examinations of the process of inner debate. Instead of direct
exclamations of dramatized inner speech like these of Elizabeth, in
Mansfield Park
Austen developed new “techniques for the representation of
inner life or interior consciousness” (Wiltshire 78).
Looking with student readers at one of Fanny Price’s
“soliloquies” side by side with Elizabeth’s moment
of self-discovery gives students a way to gauge Austen’s
changing mastery of representing thoughts, feelings, and even
unconscious impulses. Giving students a writing assignment on
one or two paragraphs of Fanny’s thinking when she is alone in
the East room enables them to perceive Fanny’s complexity and
to see how much is going on in her mind and even beneath her
consciousness. Such an assignment makes them see how inaccurate
are the readings of Fanny as self-righteous or as morally perfect.
(One of these moments Wiltshire has analyzed with exceptional
perceptiveness and depth, the paragraphs tracing Fanny’s
agonized thoughts and feelings after Edmund tells her that she is one
of his “‘two dearest objects’” (MP
264, Wiltshire 77-88).

Even greater ease and confidence
is evident in Austen’s capturing of mental processes in Emma’s
thoughts, of course in the three great epiphany scenes but also in
Austen’s succinct indications of Emma’s interior life in
half-phrases or brief implied inner colloquies. For example, in
her first conversation with Mr. Knightley, the narrator adds after,
“said Emma,” the words, “willing to let it pass—,”
concisely suggesting Emma’s inner decision not to contest a
small point with Mr. Knightley (11). Finally, in many passages
of Persuasion,
Austen renders the complexity of Anne Elliot’s thought and
feeling in sharply compressed language that comes to life in the
classroom when students read aloud some of these remarkable passages.

I turn now to one scene of Persuasion—the
remarkably complicated and memorable conversation of Anne Elliot and
Captain Harville that Captain Wentworth overhears near the end of the
novel. In her last novel, Austen’s mastery of
representing the inner life is so sophisticated that it warrants the
deep attention that we try to give it in class and in writing
assignments. I want to suggest how our conversations in the
classroom and the written conversations between student writers and
me can even shed light on experiences that Austen explores in this
scene in Persuasion.
As the characters in this scene talk and listen, they adjust what
they think and what they are saying to respond to and acknowledge
what the others say. Likewise, what my students perceive and
put into words makes me adjust my reading and return to Austen’s
texts with sharpened attention. I think and hope that what I
respond to them inspires new insights, not just about the texts
before us, but about ourselves.

In
Chapter Eleven of the second volume of Persuasion,
Austen brings together Mrs. Musgrove, Mrs. Croft and her brother
Captain Wentworth, Captain Harville, and Anne Elliot in the large
main room of the Musgrove apartment in the White Hart Inn of Bath.
In this scene, Austen not only depicts Anne’s inner life but
also allows readers to perceive the inner experience of Captain
Wentworth. As my students and I discussed this scene last
semester, we noted how many times the narrator uses an unobtrusive
word or two to indicate how the characters speak and their tones of
voice, and how subtly she locates them within a room where they are
able to listen to and hear each other. By reading closely, we
could then see how the narrator indicates some of Anne’s
implied thoughts, some of Captain Wentworth’s, and even some of
Captain Harville’s.

I attempt to diagram the scene
and place the characters in it. We read that when Anne enters
the room where Captain Wentworth has preceded her, she “immediately
heard” that Mary and Henrietta had gone out, and that she has
been ordered by the two young women to stay there until they return.
She “had only to submit, sit down, [and] be outwardly
composed,” even though she was “plunged at once in all
the agitations” that she had expected not to begin so soon
(229). Capturing Anne’s surprise, the narrator remarks,
“There was no delay, no waste of time.” Anne’s inner state when she must “submit” to being in the
electrifying presence of Captain Wentworth the narrator describes
rather tartly: “She was deep in the happiness of such
misery, or the misery of such happiness, instantly” (229).
Meanwhile, “[t]wo minutes after her entering the room,”
Captain Wentworth addresses Captain Harville and rather impersonally
says, “‘We will write the letter we were talking of,
Harville, now, if you will give me materials’” (229).
Then, without speaking to Anne, Wentworth goes to a separate table to
be “engrossed by writing,” “nearly turning his back
on them all” (230).

The focus of the scene now turns
to the conversation of the two older ladies, with Mrs. Musgrove
telling the story of Henrietta’s engagement “just in that
inconvenient tone of voice which was perfectly audible while it
pretended to be a whisper” (230). The narrator says that
“Anne felt that she did not belong to the conversation,”
but at the same time, “she could not avoid hearing many
undesirable particulars.” My students note that the
narrator appeals to the reader’s familiarity with “that
inconvenient tone of voice,” suggesting that the reader will of
course know how awkward it is to overhear too much information.
Mrs. Musgrove recounts such a “great deal” of
“[m]inutiae” about the progress of her daughter’s
romance with Charles Hayter in her “powerful whisper” to
Mrs. Croft that “Anne hoped the gentlemen might each be too
much self-occupied to hear” (230). Anne’s private
thought hints that she is embarrassed by the excessively confessional
quality of Mrs. Musgrove’s chat. One student suggested
that Mrs. Musgrove’s indiscreet way of talking about
Henrietta’s engagement perhaps inspires Anne to surmise that
Captain Wentworth would be contemptuous of such talk, for she has
observed disdain in his face on other occasions when he disapproves
of something he overhears.

We then discuss the shift in the
two ladies’ conversation when they turn to deploring long
engagements and uncertain engagements. Mrs. Croft’s
comment to Mrs. Musgrove seems almost pertinent to the broken
engagement between Anne and Wentworth. She says, “‘To
begin without knowing that at such a time there will be the means of
marrying, I hold to be very unsafe and unwise, and what, I think, all
parents should prevent as far as they can’” (231).
Does Mrs. Croft’s caution in some way vindicate Lady Russell’s
advice and Anne’s decision eight years ago? Her words
make Anne feel “an unexpected interest.” The
narrative shifts to Anne’s consciousness: “She felt
its application to herself, felt it in a nervous thrill all over her”
(231).

Austen
skillfully registers Anne’s shock in overhearing this talk
about uncertain engagements, and her instant awareness of Wentworth:
“her eyes instinctively glanced towards the distant table”
where “Captain Wentworth’s pen ceased to move, his head
was raised, pausing, listening, and he turned round the next instant
to give a look—one
quick, conscious look at her” (231). Obviously, Captain
Wentworth is not
“too much self-occupied to hear” the distant voices, or to
grasp some unintended implication of the ladies’ talk.
Because of this “look—one quick, conscious look at her,”
Anne knows that Wentworth is listening and thinking of her.
Now, “Anne heard nothing distinctly; it was only a buzz of
words in her ear” (231). We ask, what does Wentworth’s
“quick, conscious look” mean? Does he register his
sister’s words about “‘the means of marrying’”
or what “‘all parents should prevent’”?
His meaningful glance at Anne cannot be interpreted, but his “look”
makes the voices “indistinct” to her and leaves her mind
“in confusion.” Meanwhile, Captain Harville “had
in truth been hearing none” of the ladies’ conversation.
My students say that one gentleman overhears because he is drawn to
listen to any talk that Anne might be listening to; the other
gentleman doesn’t hear because he is thinking about other
things and tunes out the ladies’ voices.

By looking at Austen’s
meticulous attention early in the chapter to the possibilities of
overhearing and responding inwardly to conversations that take place
in a rather public space, we have set up a way of looking at Captain
Wentworth’s incomplete overhearing of Anne’s conversation
with Captain Harville. The two ladies cannot know that what
they are saying has particular meaning to two people in the room who
overhear them. Thus, the narrator introduces the awkwardness of
overheard conversation and the secret responses of listeners even
before Anne and Captain Harville begin to talk.

A new part of the scene begins
when Captain Harville initiates a conversation with Anne with a
“little motion of the head” that invites her to come and
stand near him. His “unaffected, easy kindness of manner”
makes her feel his friendly interest in talking with her (231).
Anne rouses herself from her reverie, gets up, and joins him “at
the other end of the room from where the two ladies were sitting, and
though nearer to Captain Wentworth’s table, not very near”
(231-32). With this change of the scene’s location, the
ladies’ voices fade out, and the two new speakers’ voices
come into range. We can now perceive that Captain Harville, who
before “seemed thoughtful and not disposed to talk,” has
been preoccupied with thinking about the portrait of Captain Benwick
that was originally intended as a gift for his sister Fanny Harville,
who has died (230). It is about this portrait that Wentworth is
presently writing, for it is now to be given to Captain Benwick’s
new fiancée, Louisa Musgrove.

We read this conversation aloud
in class, with different students taking the parts of Captain
Harville, the narrator, and, for one brief moment, Captain
Wentworth. When students read aloud with spirit, sensitivity,
and a feeling for drama, a novel comes to life for them in a
different way from when they read silently and alone. In
reading aloud, they necessarily slow down, and they hear in their own
voices the way Austen so brilliantly captures characters’ ways
of talking and thinking. Reading aloud is especially effective
with Austen’s novels, partly because she wrote dialogue so
dramatically and partly because she so deeply knew the hidden layers
of each of her characters. When the narrator’s voice is
also read aloud, it adds stage directions, insight into tones of
voice, and sometimes irony to the vivid dialogue.

In reading this scene aloud, I
reserve the part of Anne for myself because of something I learned
long ago, in another Austen course, from a student who read aloud
Anne’s part in this conversation. She did it so
beautifully that I asked her to meet with me later and do it again.
Her voice was a little low—an alto—and she read slowly,
hesitatingly, capturing the significant pattern of revising and
qualifying her assertions that typifies Anne’s way of talking.
I’ve tried to read Anne’s speeches as my former student
did ever since she gave me that little tutorial in Anne’s way
of speaking. Remembering her insights, last semester I wrote to
one student, “Notice how often Anne revises her claims and
assertions to be respectful of Captain Harville, and to acknowledge
the validity of his points.” I point out places like this
one where Anne corrects herself: “‘True’ said
Anne, ‘very true; I did not recollect; but what shall we say
now, Captain Harville?’” (233).

We begin reading aloud with
Captain Harville’s mournful remark about his sister.
Showing the portrait to Anne, Captain Harville sadly says that his
sister Fanny would not so quickly have forgotten Captain Benwick as
he seems to have forgotten her. Anne replies to him “in a
low feeling voice.” Her heartfelt response, “‘It
would not be the nature of any woman who truly loved,’”
makes Captain Harville smile and imply that she is making a claim
about all women (232). Anne smiles in return and acknowledges
that he is right. The two then debate whether men or women are
more constant in love, or which sex is more predisposed “‘to
be inconstant and forget those they do love, or have loved’”
(233).

My students detect in the
conversation between Anne and Captain Harville an improvisational
quality, as both try out arguments to defend the constancy of their
own sex. Their tones seem at first musing, friendly,
respectful, and rather relaxed. Each one speaks with feeling
and from conviction but responds to what the other says with tact,
sometimes with playfulness, and an improvisational spirit. They
are not in a hurry, for Anne and Harville are both waiting for
someone else to be ready to do something. My student Jarred
Lynch wrote that Captain Harville appears at first to be somewhat
lightheartedly enjoying the “banter” as he argues for women’s
infidelity “but that Anne is much more personally vested in the
exchange.”

In writing about this
conversation, both Jarred and my student Kathy Hume found language to
measure the emotional investment of the two speakers, Anne and
Captain Harville, as they each explain their views. Kathy
attempted to sort out the various levels of what she called “the
characters’ unawareness of the motives of others” as she
wrote about this scene. She carefully noted that Captain
Harville cannot know that Anne is talking about herself when she
replies: “‘We certainly do not forget you, so soon
as you forget us’” (232). Kathy wrote that Anne
does not fully realize that Captain Wentworth might try to overhear
their conversation but that when “Anne declares her opinion
that men forget love easily because of their focus on their
profession,” she must be talking about him. Kathy
perceived that the tone of the conversation is “contemplative
and friendly, but for Anne, [the conversation] is more meaningful and
anxious [than for Harville] as she is revealing hidden truths.
The reader can ascertain these tones while it is impossible for the
characters to realize all the parts of what is happening.”
Jarred wrote, “Anne’s explanations to Captain Harville,
effusing such emotion, are here a surrogate for a conversation she
could never have with Wentworth himself.” In response to
Jarred’s analysis of the scene, I went back to the text, trying
to figure out what Austen allows us to conclude that Wentworth could
overhear and whether Anne meant for him to overhear. To Jarred
I wrote, “In Anne’s and Harville’s debate, I think
you capture beautifully the tone of Harville’s engagement as at
least initially lighthearted. But I don’t think it’s
true that Anne is directly addressing Wentworth. Anne seems
active and expressive, but she believes that he is out of earshot.
Later it becomes clear that Wentworth can hear only snatches of what
she says.”

By reading aloud Anne’s
self-deprecating explanation for women’s tenacious feelings, we
could perceive her unwillingness to win the argument by force.
Michelle Chernobylsky pointed to Anne’s speeches comparing
women’s lives with men’s lives. She wrote about the
generosity of Anne’s speech about women’s confinement:
“‘It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We
cannot help ourselves. We live at home, quiet, confined, and
our feelings prey upon us. You are forced on exertion.
You have always a profession, pursuits, business of some sort or
other, to take you back into the world immediately’”
(232). Or as Evelyne Gagnon wrote, Anne argues that men are
“always busy and have no time to brood over love.”

Likewise, we noted Anne’s
openly expressed admiration of men’s necessary courage and her
respect for the sacrifices their lives demand. Several students
cited Anne’s touching description of the lives of sea
captains. Anne tells Harville,

“You
have difficulties, and privations, and dangers enough to struggle
with. You are always labouring and toiling, exposed to every
risk and hardship. Your home, country, friends, all quitted.
Neither time, nor health, nor life, to be called your own. It
would be too hard indeed” (with a faltering voice) “if
woman’s feelings were to be added to all this.”
(233)

Anne’s
description of the lives of sea captains is perfectly appropriate for
her to address to Captain Harville, and she directs her words
specifically to him: “‘You
have difficulties, and privations, and dangers enough to struggle
with” (italics added). But in this speech she is of
course really thinking of Wentworth. The reader knows that Anne
had carefully studied the Navy lists during the years when Wentworth
was at sea, and that she listens attentively to him when he describes
his life on the Asp and the Laconia. She has had external
sources for her knowledge of a captain’s life, and her
imagination has enabled her to fill in the personal meanings to him
of Wentworth’s life in the Navy. Moreover, her speech
makes clear that because she has so fully imagined his life at sea,
she has forgiven him for seeming to be inconstant in his love for
her.

Does he overhear this speech? Some of my students think he does, and some even read this speech
as Anne’s deliberate declaration to him of her continuing
love. They claim that she is explaining to him and to herself
that she understands why his attachment to her was not
“‘longer-lived’” (233). One wrote, “She
seems to be testing Wentworth,” and another wrote, “Although
Captain Harville does not comprehend the significance of Anne’s
statements, Captain Wentworth understands them perfectly.”
My students’ observations led me back to this moment in the
conversation to figure out whether Wentworth seems to overhear this
part of the debate. The narrator’s mention of Anne’s
“faltering voice” suggests that Anne’s tone at this
moment may be too low for Wentworth to hear. But Kathy wrote,
“Anne’s faltering voice reveals how affected she is by
this thought, and Captain Wentworth is equally moved as well.
He drops his pen as he is so distracted with their conversation, then
picks it up to compose a note to Anne of his feelings.”
As Kathy surmised, it is perhaps at this point in listening to their
conversation that Wentworth sets aside the letter he is writing for
Harville and begins his letter to Anne.

Another way we tried to figure
out whether Wentworth overhears Anne’s contrast of the lives of
men and the lives of women is by looking at what Wentworth says that
he is hearing as he writes his passionate letter to “Miss
A. E.—.” He is writing as the conversation
unfolds, so his words reveal the parts of the conversation he is
overhearing. He begins with a comment on his place outside the
conversation. “‘I can
listen no longer in silence.’” Early in the letter,
he ardently writes, “‘Dare not say that man forgets
sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have
loved none but you’” (237). These sentences respond
to Anne’s words about men’s lives, though perhaps he
cannot hear her generous concession that “‘[i]t would be
too hard indeed . . . if woman’s feelings were to be
added to all this,’” spoken in a “faltering voice”
(233).

It is at this moment in the
conversation between Anne and Harville that

a slight noise called their
attention to Captain Wentworth’s hitherto perfectly quiet
division of the room. It was nothing more than that his pen had
fallen down, but Anne was startled at finding him nearer than she had
supposed, and half inclined to suspect that the pen had only fallen,
because he had been occupied by them, striving to catch sounds, which
yet she did not think he could have caught. (233-34)

Again
the narrator measures the distance between the speakers and the
listener by mentioning the “slight noise” that calls the
attention of Anne and Harville to Wentworth’s place at the
“separate table.” It is only the sound of
Wentworth’s pen falling—a sound that breaks the perfect
silence in his part of the room. This fascinating sentence
makes ambiguous the imagined distance between speakers and
listeners: Anne is “startled at finding him nearer than
she had supposed,” but she still surmises that Wentworth had
been “striving to catch sounds, which yet she did not think he
could have caught.” Because of Anne’s almost
telepathic understanding of Wentworth’s perceptions and his
inner life, the reader can deduce that Wentworth is trying to hear,
that he can hear something of the conversation but cannot quite catch
every word or sentence.

His
letter corroborates this interpretation. Later in the letter he
says, “‘I can hardly write. I am every instant
hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but
I can distinguish the tones of that voice, when they would be lost on
others’” (237). He is “‘every instant
hearing something,’” and he is moved by the
characteristic “‘tones of that voice’” he
knows so well but perhaps cannot pick up her exact words. To my
student Evelyne, I wrote, “you definitely perceive the way that
Anne’s heartfelt declarations have the effect of moving
Wentworth to write his impassioned letter. But I think perhaps
you are attributing to Anne purposes that are really Austen’s.
The author wanted to find a way for Anne to be active in the
reconciliation with Wentworth, and gave her this conversation with
the kind, brotherly Captain Harville as a way for her to voice her
own deep feelings. That’s why this chapter is so much
more powerful and dramatic than the cancelled final chapters that
Austen decided not to use. I don’t think Anne is
declaring her love to
Wentworth; she is only speaking truthfully to Captain Harville, who
cannot know that she is telling him about her enduring love for
Wentworth. Austen is the one who makes if possible for Anne
actively to declare her constant love and to be more than a passive
recipient of Wentworth’s renewed offers.”

Student readers easily fathom
that after Wentworth’s pen drops, Harville raises his voice as
he calls out to him: “‘Have you finished your
letter?’” Wentworth answers, “‘Not
quite. . . . I shall have done in five minutes’”
(234). Harville reassures Wentworth that he is in no hurry to
leave as he is quite happy where he is. He then turns his
attention back to the conversation, “smiling at Anne” and
“lowering his voice.”

The wonderfully improvisational
quality of Anne’s and Harville’s next exchange returns
the debate to its earlier relaxed tone. Harville offers the
argument that literature supports his side of the debate: all
stories, prose and verse, all books, support his argument about
“‘woman’s fickleness.’” But he
also kindly offers Anne a possible rebuttal of his argument:
“‘But perhaps you will say, these were all written by
men’” (234). Again, improvisationally, Anne accepts
his suggestion and answers: “‘Perhaps I shall.—Yes,
yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books,’”
adding with wonderfully ironic aptness about men’s advantages
in education and in telling their own stories: “‘the
pen has been in their hands’” (234). This is funny
because Wentworth himself has had the pen in his hand and funny
because he just dropped it. Anne rejects the argument that
books prove Captain Harville’s side, saying, “‘I
will not allow books to prove any thing’” (234).

As a student reads Harville’s
next speech aloud, we can hear the intensity of the character’s
feelings. Giving up the argument that literature proves men’s
constancy and women’s inconstancy, Harville instead uses his
own personal experience. He revises the terms of his argument,
and the “lightheartedness” that Jarred noted in his
earlier “banter” changes to ardent self-disclosure.
Harville’s earnest, pleading speech is spoken “in a tone
of strong feeling,” as he bursts out with an “‘Ah!’”
and a wish that “‘I could but make you comprehend what a
man suffers when he takes a last look at his wife and children’”
(234-35). His heartfelt portrait of the anguished farewell of a
sea captain to his vanishing family, and then his rapturous
description of such a man’s return and the self-deceiving
calculations he makes about when he can possibly expect to see them
all again, are obviously his own vivid memories of parting and
reuniting with his wife and children. He wants to make Anne
understand these feelings. He exclaims, “‘If I
could explain to you all this, and all that a man can bear and do,
and glories to do for the sake of these treasures of his
existence!’” And then, perhaps realizing that his
own personal experience does not necessarily translate into a
generalization about all men, he concludes: “‘I
speak, you know, only of such men as have hearts!’” as he
is “pressing his own with emotion” (235).

In response to such a burst of
feeling and such a personal revelation, Anne likewise raises her
voice.

Oh!”
cried Anne eagerly, “I hope I do

justice
to all that is felt by you, and by those who resemble you. God
forbid that I should undervalue the warm and faithful feelings of any
of my fellow-creatures. I should deserve utter contempt if I
dared to suppose that true
attachment and constancy
were known only by woman.” (235, italics added)

The
exclamation and the words “‘God forbid’” and
“‘utter contempt’” mark the vigor and energy
of Anne’s acknowledgement of Harville’s touching speech.
But when she returns—more gently and less categorically—to
their general argument she reduces her claim about women’s
faithfulness to the famous final sentence: “‘All
the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one,
you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or
when hope is gone’” (235). What she says in
parenthesis is necessarily spoken in a softer (parenthetical) voice,
and it seems that her voice would sink further as she utters the
words “‘when hope is gone.’” The
narrator’s comment about Anne’s demeanor at the end of
this speech confirms that Anne’s voice has become softer as she
makes this last claim: “She could not immediately have
uttered another sentence; her heart was too full, her breath too much
oppressed.” Harville’s tender acknowledgment of her
beautiful speech comes in his final concession, “‘There
is no quarrelling with you.—And when I think of Benwick, my
tongue is tied.’” And he puts his hand on her arm
“quite affectionately,” allowing her to have the last
word (235-36).

When Anne raises her voice to acknowledge the ardor of Harville’s
description of yearning for his wife and children, Wentworth
overhears all that she says. He actually cites the first
sentences of her last speech at the end of his letter. It is
striking evidence that Wentworth is listening intently to the
conversation and hearing it all, for he picks up the exact words of
her speech: “‘Too good, too excellent creature!
You do us justice
indeed. You do believe that there is true
attachment and constancy
among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating in
F. W.’” Both incredibly touching and comically
ironic, Wentworth’s letter and his renewed passion for Anne
Elliot partly refute her side of the argument about men’s and
women’s constancy. He has
loved only Anne. As I wrote to Kathy Hume, “You capture
the final irony of the scene: that Wentworth is not
inconstant, though Anne has argued with great delicacy and sympathy
that men cannot be as constant as women. His constant love
disproves her argument.”

Wentworth’s letter is
almost too nakedly emotional to read aloud, but student writers
respond powerfully to its immediacy and the way it connects directly
to Anne’s words. My student Martin Busch chose to write
about Wentworth’s letter. He began, “Captain
Wentworth’s letter to Anne is easily Austen’s most
poetic, heart-wrenching, and beautiful proposal (and maybe even
passage) that I have seen in any of her novels this semester.
This passage could easily melt the cold heart of any Ice Queen and
inspire any future Casanova.” Marty found Wentworth
rather reserved throughout the novel, but when he read the letter,
Marty was stunned. He cited its central lines:

“You
pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not
that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever.
I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than
when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago. . . .
I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and
resentful I have been, but never inconstant.” (237)

Commenting
on these sentences, Marty wrote, “Wentworth here is not only
declaring his love but attempting to justify his actions. He
attempts to apologize for his resentment but at the same time reveals
that he is still hurt. . . . It also seems that Wentworth
feels remorse for feigning an interest in Louisa Musgrove because he
says he has not loved another since Anne.” Entering fully
into the logic of the letter, Marty discerned the complexity of
character that Austen imagined in Captain Wentworth. Although
Wentworth admits to being “‘unjust,’”
“‘weak,’” and “‘resentful,’”
when he enters the debate on men’s and women’s constancy,
he says that he was “‘never inconstant.’”
He always loved Anne, even when he was angry.

In his conclusion, Marty argued
that Anne’s response to this “heart-wrenching”
letter was worthy of the letter’s power. “Anne’s
reaction to the letter entirely lives up to the strength of the
proposal. As happens so many times in the novel, she finds
herself completely unable to see or hear her surrounding companions
and is overcome with a surge of emotion. . . . ‘She
began not to understand a word they said and was obliged to plead
indisposition and excuse herself’ (238).” Marty
added, “This complete incapacitation of all senses is the only
acceptable reaction to a proposal so rich and powerful, proving to
the reader how worthy Anne is of the romantic seaman, Captain
Wentworth.”

Once again, a life-changing letter is read by a woman whose eagerness to
understand can scarcely be put into words. Anne’s
relation to her letter is opposite to that of Elizabeth, who wants
vigorously to reject every word of Darcy’s letter:
“stedfastly was she persuaded that he could have no explanation
to give, which a just sense of shame would not conceal” (204).
Anne’s eager hope that Wentworth’s letter will be a
renewed declaration of his love does not need to be stated. The
narrator succinctly captures the intensity of Anne’s reading of
Wentworth’s letter by saying, “her eyes devoured”
it, suggesting that she almost ingests the astounding sentences
(237). But even Anne, who knows Wentworth so well, could not
have expected sentences of such articulate and agonized passion:
“You pierce my soul”; “a heart even more your own
than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago”
(237). The
narrator simply observes, “Such a letter was not to be soon
recovered from” (238). Colleen Kavanagh wrote about
Anne’s reaction after “her eyes devoured” (237) the
words of the letter. Anne feels “an overpowering
happiness” (238), but as Colleen observed, “Anne is
overwhelmed by her intense emotions, but never once does she question
the action she will take. Immediately, she begins to think of
how she will get word to Captain Wentworth.” She went on,
“the tone in this passage is one of desperation.”
Colleen wrote that Anne “needed time to process her thoughts,
but she didn’t have that luxury. When she realized that
she had to get word to Wentworth, she was desperate to find him.
The passage makes you want to read desperately and quickly to make
sure that these characters will finally find happiness.”

In describing my experience of teaching these novels, I am borrowing
Anne’s ironic language about the “privilege” she
claims for her own sex as she finally reduces her argument about
women’s constancy: “‘All the privilege I
claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not
covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is
gone’” (235). The privilege I claim for my
profession as a teacher is
quite enviable: I reread Austen’s writing every year with
relatively new readers, and go through the pleasure of rediscovering
her works as my students are reading them and writing about them.
Austen’s legacy stays fresh for me partly because of the living
experience of the classroom and my discoveries in reading and
responding to student writing. Students’
perceptions—sometimes startlingly accurate, sometimes
incomplete, and sometimes really wrong—constantly lead me to
new respect for the layers of thought in Austen’s construction
of such scenes as the one when Captain Wentworth overhears some part
of the conversation between Anne and Captain Harville.

My students’ lively and
heartfelt readings of that conversation and of Captain Wentworth’s
letter led me back to the chapter with renewed attention and awe at
Austen’s superb management of the complexities of overheard
conversation and her skill at succinctly capturing the inner
experience of her characters. The narrator’s subtle and
unobtrusive indications of where the characters are located
physically, the volume of their voices, and their deeply imagined
responses to words spoken, overheard, partially heard, understood and
not understood emerge with new brilliance as I follow the logic of
the text and the logic of students’ fresh readings.